You Will Be Found
by Justice237
Summary: Sylvester Cole has learned to expect and prepare for the worst, but it's hard when the worst outcome is reached in the worst way. Finding lost souls is one thing. Fixing them is another. When one particularly broken young man appears to him one lonely night, Sylvester begins to doubt if anyone, let alone himself, can fix his broken parts.
1. You Will Be Found

**So, I haven't been too active lately, writing-wise. This is due to many things - uni, exams, the effect of said uni and exams on my mental health. Believe it or not, this fic isn't for projection purposes - well, not entirely. It's actually inspired by another story in another fandom. That fic is "Suicide Line" by Nydimen in the fandom for the anime "Yuri! on Ice", but the original is in Spanish and I had to use Google translate to understand it. But it inspired me to write this. You can view this as a companion piece to my old story "And I Feel Them Drown My Name", but they're really only connected theme-wise. The title is taken from the song of the same name from the musical "Dear Evan Hansen."**

**Credit goes to Dark Heart 945 for designing the cover!**

**Trigger warning: Mentions of suicide, sexual assault and disordered eating.**

The median lethal dose for caffeine in humans is estimated to be 150-200 milligrams per kilogram of body mass.

That equated to about 75-100 cups of coffee for a 70kg adult.

But at this point, 23-year-old Sylvester Cole felt like he could consume all the coffee beans in the world and not feel a thing.

He didn't mind the night shifts. Or at least, he tried not to mind them. They were a godsend for the people who needed them most. But Sylvester was only a person himself. This week had been relatively quiet, with fewer calls than the previous week.

Of course, it was hard to tell if that was a good or bad thing when working at a suicide hotline.

Sylvester Cole lived a comfortable life. He had a nice flat, a loving mother, a sweet fiancée and a job that he found fulfilment in. It was one thing to feel warm and fuzzy when you do or say something nice to someone else, it was another to be the shoulder that a stranger cries on, the bed that they lie on until they can find the strength to get up from it and move on.

And it was another thing entirely when the people who tried to reach out ended up slipping away no matter how hard Sylvester tried to cling on.

He sipped his espresso at the thought in a manner similar to how an alcoholic might take a swig in an effort to forget their own pain. He'd always been a sensitive soul, but he'd taken care not to take a job like this without the support system he currently had. His fiancée, Eva, whom he had been with since he was 19. His mother, Constance, as secure and stable as her name. His best friend Reese, who had found him by sheer chance when he was lost ... so, so lost ...

The phone rang, and Sylvester found himself again.

"Hello, thank you for finding the courage to reach out to us today. With whom do I have the pleasure?"

"... I can't go on," said the resigned voice on the other end.

"Why do you feel like that?" Sylvester asked calmly.

"I can't get out. There's only one way out."

"What's your name?" That, along with the greeting when he first picked up, was the only piece of dialogue Sylvester would say that could be considered "scripted." It was a way to distract a suicidal person from their thoughts and to make them more comfortable with pouring their heart out to a stranger. It was easier if they seemed less like a stranger.

"Ryan," said the voice. "Reeves, Ryan Reeves," he clarified.

"Is that a Scouse accent I hear?" Sylvester asked, noticing how he rolled his R's.

A heavy sigh permeated through the speaker along with something along the lines of 'having a pop at me accent,' before saying clearly, "Yes. Haven't been there in ages, though."

"What brought you to Newcastle, then, Ryan?" Sylvester inquired. "How long have you been here?"

"I'd rather not talk about that," Ryan said quietly. "Not now."

"Then why don't you start at the beginning?" Sylvester said. "Tell me your story."

"It's a long one."

"I have all night."

"Will you last that long?"

"I will if you will."

Ryan sighed. "If you're sure."

"I am sure, Ryan," Sylvester insisted. "I will listen to you for the next twenty-four hours and even more."

The brief silence on the other end screamed doubt at him, before: "It all started on my birthday. Not the actual day I was born but on my birthday. My fifth birthday."

"What happened on your fifth birthday?"

"I was just a little kid, a happy little boy, and then Chloe fell," Ryan started. "She's my little sister, she was three, and she fell out of the window of our little flat. She was paralysed from it, waist down. Our mum wasn't there, she'd been out shopping, but when she saw Chloe's body lying on the ground, she freaked. I tried to go up to her, but she screamed at me, pushed me away, slapped me, yelled that I had somehow pushed her. I tried to speak up, I said over and over again that I never hurt Chloe, but her word against mine - who was gonna believe a rotten little brat like me?"

Sylvester flinched silently, both at the insult in the last sentence and at the venom tainting the other boy's tone of voice.

"Our mum was an alkie," Ryan went on. "I don't think she even remembered it was my birthday."

There was a brief pause as both males collected themselves before Ryan spoke again. "What's _your_ name?"

"Sylvester," the older man replied. "Sylvester Cole."

"Do you have a mum, Sylvester Cole?" Ryan asked, a hint of envy serrating the edge of the question.

"... Yes," Sylvester admitted, after a brief hesitation.

"What's she like?"

Sylvester paused. It didn't feel right to talk about his mother's strengths after Ryan had just divulged his own mother's failings, but nonetheless, he did as the boy asked. "She's a really strong woman," he said. "My dad left us when I was pretty young, so she had to raise me on her own. When I was younger, she used to call me 'Silver'."

"'Silver'," Ryan repeated. "Did your mates at school call you that too?"

"No, no way," Sylvester replied. "They just called me Sylvester or Syl. I liked it when my mum called me Silver though. She even dressed me up like Quicksilver one Halloween."

"Your mum had to raise you on her own," Ryan stated, like he was processing it, before his voice sunk into melancholy. "What was the difference between her and my mum?"

Sylvester bit his lip. This was what he'd worried about when Ryan had asked about his mother. Swallowing, he continued talking. "Ryan, you don't have to answer this, but what about your father? Was he in the picture at all, at this point?"

"There was never any picture at all," Ryan said. "I know nothing about him, or Chloe's father, for that matter."

"Chloe's father?" Sylvester frowned, before realising. "Oh, you and she are half-siblings?"

"Never been confirmed, but how else do you explain the fact that Mum is blonde, Chloe has dark hair and I have light brown hair?" Ryan said.

Genetic anomalies existed, Sylvester knew, but even so, it was easy to see why Ryan, or anyone else, would be suspicious. Now wasn't the time to be pedantic, however. "What happened after Chloe's fall?"

"I got taken away, of course," Ryan said bitterly. "I didn't know what was going on, I just knew that mum didn't want me anymore. The people there didn't seem like they wanted me either. I was just a kid, being treated like scum. They kept telling me it was because I had pushed my little sister out of a window, and when you're a kid being told something over and over again, and you don't know or trust any better ... you believe it."

"And you were five years old?" Sylvester clarified, trying to stop his voice from shaking.

"Yep," Ryan said quietly. "When people expect nothing but bad things from you, what do you think I gave them?"

There was a pointed silence as Sylvester processed this.

"That's how it was for the next eight years, until I saw Chloe again," Ryan said. "She'd been writing to me for years before that. I never read her letters, I couldn't bring myself to. But one of my friends at the time talked me into seeing her. It was that day that I found out what Mum did."

"How did you find out?" Sylvester asked.

"One of my housemates found an old newspaper article about it," Ryan said. "Mum told Chloe and everyone else that she was in the flat when she fell and that she saw me push her. But that article, it had a quote from a witness, he said he saw mum out on the street, dropping her shopping and running to Chloe's body ... meaning she wasn't in the flat." The boy's voice was tinted with both anger and crushing devastation. "She let me think that for years, pushed it all onto a little kid. I believed I was no good, did the most _rotten_ things because I thought I was rotten ..." Ryan had to pause there, to allow his cracking voice time to piece itself together again, "... I've done a lot, but I _never _hurt Chloe."

Sylvester just sat there, listening on the other end, stunned into silence by the sheer _evil_ that was being recounted to him by its victim. The very thought of a mother doing something so heinous to her own child made him feel so ill that he felt his just-drunk coffee burning the back of his throat. For a long moment, words failed him, before the only thing that slipped out was, "Holy shit ..."

Ryan said nothing on the other end, so Sylvester forced some more out. "That is just awful, Ryan, I'm so sorry. Your mum should never have ..." he trailed off, realising something. "Wait, where was your mum when you met Chloe?"

"America," Ryan said bluntly. "She'd dumped Chloe off into care a couple of years back to run away to America with a guy she met. No idea what the hell happened to him, but I guess in hindsight, I shouldn't have been too surprised."

It didn't surprise Sylvester either. "What happened then?" he urged. "Did you feel a weight off your shoulders, or anything, after finding out?"

Ryan chuckled darkly. "I wish. Old habits die hard, Silver. Really hard."

Sylvester was about to protest at the use of the nickname, but decided it was the least of their problems.

"Somehow, I couldn't change. I couldn't stop doing bad things. Every time I tried to change, it would last for a few days, or a week, before I fucked up again. It was like a security blanket I couldn't take off," Ryan explained. "That was until about two years ago when my mother came back."

Sylvester audibly gasped.

"No idea what happened with her American boyfriend, she didn't mention him at all," Ryan said. "But it didn't matter, she was back and she wanted to take Chloe with her, and I couldn't let that happen."

"How did Chloe feel about it?" Sylvester questioned. "Did she want to go with her?"

"She didn't believe in her," Ryan said. "She really wanted to, but she just didn't. I mean, can you imagine spending every day wondering if this is the day your own mother would ditch you, again? That's not a way to live."

"What did you do?"

"I put Mum in her place," Ryan said firmly. "I met her again, without Chloe. She tried to gaslight me again, telling me it was my fault Chloe fell. But I wasn't having it. It got pretty heated in there, at one point I told her I was gonna tell everyone what a terrible mum she was, so she would never get her back."

"And did you?" Sylvester asked.

"I wanted to, at that point, I really did," Ryan admitted. "But I realised that if I did, I would be just like her, slandering someone else to make yourself look better, so I didn't."

Sylvester breathed out.

"After she figured out it wasn't working, she flipped at the drop of a hat. Suddenly, she was gonna make it up to both of us, be the mum she should've been. But I knew she couldn't change just like that. People don't work that way, I of all people should know that. I shut that down pretty quick, made it clear that she wasn't what Chloe deserves. Hell, she's not even what _I_ deserve, and that's saying something. She even admitted it herself, it was easier to blame me and not face herself. Doesn't that tell you everything?"

"You're not wrong," Sylvester replied, unable to say much else.

"Something in me just ... snapped, that day. I didn't wanna be like that anymore, stuck somewhere I didn't wanna be, being someone I'm not. Shortly after that, I left care. For the first time in my life, I had a reason to believe I'd be okay."

Sylvester sat there taking all this in, before saying, "Ryan, that is so good to hear. It takes so much strength to face your past and the people that hurt you like that. I'm proud of you."

"Thanks," Ryan replied, sounding surprisingly sincere, before he spoke again with his tone so different that Sylvester nearly got whiplash. "But that doesn't mean much to me now. It doesn't matter how strong I was then, do you think I'd be calling this number if it did?"

It was understandable, Sylvester thought, but it didn't mean he couldn't help Ryan find that strength again. "You say this was two years ago? Did anything happen since?"

Ryan sighed. "I'll get to that." His voice sounded heavy with burden. "For the last few months I was in care, I got a Saturday job at a stable, looking after police horses. It was divine intervention how I got there, to be honest, considering how much I fucked up on that first day," he said with a small but more genuine laugh that made Sylvester smile too, "but I got better. I worked there full time after I left care. For a while, I loved it. I was fitting in with people, I was waking up looking forward to the day ahead. The horses were great, I don't really like animals but they're different, they're so gentle. Things were looking up ... for a while."

"I'm getting the feeling there's a 'but' coming," Sylvester said bluntly, detecting Ryan's deflating mood.

"Yep," Ryan sighed. "Eight months ago, I heard the news from Chloe. Our mum fell off the wagon one night, drank herself into a stupor. Not quite sure how she did it, but she fell out of the window and smashed her head in."

Sylvester blinked sharply, stunned once again. Not only by what Ryan had just told him but the way in which he said it. After everything Ryan had recounted, maybe it shouldn't have been overly surprising, but even so, it was unnerving to hear someone talk about the death of their own mother in such a matter-of-fact manner. "I would say 'sorry', but I have a feeling you wouldn't agree."

"Chloe didn't either," Ryan said, his tone coloured with resentment. "She was upset, of course, because she'd been with her for longer, but she didn't understand why I wasn't mourning her - and she knows about everything mum did!"

"Grief is complex, Ryan," Sylvester explained. "It's possible she may not have been thinking straight. She may have wanted to share her grief with someone who might understand, and she got upset when you didn't."

Ryan scoffed. "Well, too bad for her, because I'm not gonna play a game of pretend, I've done enough of that for one lifetime," he spat. "After all our mother put me through - put _us_ through - what does she expect me to say? That my world has gone dark without her light?! She took away the light in my world, for crying out loud!" His voice was becoming more and more tense, like a burning fuse growing ever shorter before he exploded. "And now Chloe wants me to pretend it wasn't true! That she wasn't the monster I always knew she was!"

The pregnant silence that followed echoed down the phone line, except for Ryan's faint panting. It lasted for far too long before Sylvester managed to find his voice again. "That's quite some brutal stuff, Ryan," he began, still reeling slightly from the boy's outburst. "I can see this is getting closer to home for you. We don't have to talk about this anymore if you don't want-"

"I need to talk about it!" Ryan insisted. "I need to talk about it because if I don't, you won't understand and you'll try and stop me. Well, you're gonna try and stop me anyway, but I just ... need to get it off my chest."

"Then do it, Ryan," Sylvester said firmly. He often found that once a suicidal person actually got to thinking and talking about why they wanted to bite the big one, they were more likely to realise that their problems had solutions and not all was lost. "Tell me as much as you can, but you can still stop if it gets too much."

Ryan took a few deep breaths before continuing. "Chloe didn't understand why I wouldn't mourn with her, or come to the funeral. She told me that she thought I'd changed, that I was actually becoming a decent person, and that if I still couldn't change after everything that had happened, then she was done with me. She literally said I was a lost cause." Ryan gulped hard. "Basically confirming what I'd believed about myself for years."

"She was wrong, Ryan," Sylvester said. "You have every right in the world to not forgive the person who abused you, whether they're alive or dead. It doesn't make you a bad person."

"Doesn't matter who's right or wrong," Ryan muttered. "After that, when I tried contacting her, I found she'd blocked me*."

"My God ..." Sylvester replied. Out of everything Ryan had been through, the way he'd said that conveyed that it had easily been the most painful.

"I spent more time at work after that," Ryan said. "I tried to forget her by spending more time with my colleagues and the horses. I didn't tell my colleagues anything, but I did talk to El Nino. He's my favourite horse there, quite old but still sturdy. He doesn't talk back, of course, but it made me feel a little better. It wasn't easy, but I tried to move on. I tried my hardest to feel happy again, I tried so, so hard to believe, but somehow I didn't see what was really there ... until about a month ago."

Sylvester noticed Ryan's speech becoming more and more staggered as he went on talking, like forcing the words out was becoming physically strenuous. "I repeat, you don't have to-"

"I guess I should've noticed, really," Ryan interrupted, before he could change his mind. "My boss, Richard, he was kind of ... touchy. Not in a major way at first, just the occasional pat on the back, but then he started ... putting his arm around me, pulling me closer towards him, making me really uncomfortable. But I didn't want to focus on it because I was trying to feel the least bad I possibly could. But then-" Ryan cut off abruptly as his voice broke.

If they had been talking face to face, Sylvester was sure that Ryan would've been biting his lip and tensing his body tight. It only took a split second to realise where this could possibly be going. Before he could respond, however, Ryan was talking again.

"I guess I should've known better than to stay late after work with only him there," Ryan uttered. "I was in the backroom just putting some stuff away, and Richard came in and said he wanted to have a ... discussion ... with me. I didn't realise-" Ryan cut himself off again as the broken sound threatened to tear itself from his throat. "I didn't realise he'd locked the door until it was too late. I-I tried to fight back ... I really tried ..." At that point, it finally seemed too much for Ryan to recall and he devolved into hitching breaths.

Words were failing Sylvester far too often in his conversation, but what was there to say? There was nothing he could say that could make it better. The sheer _injustice_ that had been dealt to this one boy over the course of a lifetime - no combination of words in the young man's vocabulary felt adequate as a response. But he couldn't leave Ryan suffering in silence. "Ryan ... do you want to take a break? Just breathe with me right now. I'm right here, I'm not going anywhere."

Contrary to his intention, Ryan let a few sobs cascade forward, before saying, "Please, stay with me, just for a moment."

"I'll stay with you until the end," Sylvester reassured. "Now, I know we can't see each other, but I want you to try and listen to my breathing, okay?" he instructed, taking deep, loud breaths.

"Until the end," Ryan choked out, trying to copy him.

It took a solid two minutes of breathing before Ryan felt grounded enough to speak again. Over that time, Sylvester heard the whooshing of fast-moving vehicles on a road nearby. He now had a pretty good idea of where Ryan was but decided to keep this to himself for the time being and hastily scribbled down what he knew into his notebook. "I'm sorry," Ryan sniffed finally.

"Don't apologise, you are not to blame for any of this," Sylvester replied. "I want you to listen to me very carefully, Ryan - _it is not your fault._ The only one to blame is the one who did this to you, and he should be reported.

"There's more," Ryan said (causing Sylvester's internal monologue to scream _How much worse can this get?!). "_Not a lot more, but ... it's enough. That was a month ago, and I haven't gone back to work since, I can't go back and face him, I just can't. I considered reporting him, really I did, but when my colleagues tried to reach me and I tried to tell them, they didn't believe me. They said I was trying to defame their boss and get them all fired - along with myself, apparently. Needless to say, I wouldn't exactly be welcome there if I went back. I was considering reporting him almost immediately, but that's the main reason I didn't."

The second he said this, Sylvester grabbed his pen and hastily scribbled down the details he knew - a man named Richard that worked at a police horse stables in Newcastle - and made a note to track him down and report him himself. The man deserved it for driving an already fragile kid to this state.

"They fired me, eventually, of course," Ryan went on, sounding resigned. "I've had no income for the last few weeks. My water bill alone will probably bankrupt me because I keep having showers because I feel so dirty," he said, his voice filling with a new emotion - disgust. "_Tainted_, like there's a mark on me everyone can sense, and it never goes away no matter how much I wash. I've barely slept because I can't stop seeing him, I close my eyes and he's there. I'm eating less and less just to extend my food supply, going longer and longer without eating. I actually haven't eaten since Friday, right now."

_It's Sunday evening,_ Sylvester realised, his eyes widening in panic. "Ryan, please, tell me you're still drinking." He tried to keep the quaking out of his voice.

"Yes, I am," Ryan said quickly, which caused Sylvester to release some of the tension in his body. Not all of it though, he was listening to Ryan with bated breath. "Not that it matters, pretty soon I won't be eating anything ever again."

_Not if I can help it._

"Sylvester, where can I go from here?" Ryan asked rhetorically. "There's nothing left for me. Even if I don't die tonight, I'll probably starve to death eventually, or end up out on the streets."

"Ryan, that's not true," Sylvester said. "I know you feel like nobody's there for you, like you've been forgotten, but I'm here for you now. I can help, I can direct you to people that can help you, they'll come running right to you if you reach out to them. I'll even report Richard for you, he can't get away with what he did to you."

"Will they believe you?"

"I'll make them believe me," Sylvester said, with more certainty than he felt. All he really had was Ryan's testimony, which was unlikely to be considered adequate, especially if Ryan himself was unwilling to speak about it. But he had to do something, he couldn't let a monster walk free. "There are support groups out there for people in your situation, they can help you heal. You are not alone, Ryan, no one is. I know you're in a dark place right now, I can't imagine how awful you must've been feeling for these past weeks, but you will be found."

There was yet another pause on the line, before more noise poured in from the end. At first, Sylvester thought Ryan was sobbing, but as the sounds grew louder, he realised he was actually laughing - or laughing and sobbing at the same time? It wasn't pleasant on the ear. "You don't get it, do you, Silver?"

"What do you mean?"

Ryan let out a breath as he calmed down slightly. "Look, Silver, I appreciate your efforts, I know you're just doing what you think is right, but they can't help me. It's not a matter of whether someone will find me. I mean, you found me easily enough. It's about whether they can fix me, and I think I've gotten to the point where I'm too broken to be fixed. I mean, would they like what they saw? Doubt it, I think they'd hate it too."

Sylvester's heart ached at the boy's words, but he couldn't give up on him now. "I don't hate it," he said. "I don't think you're a bad person, Ryan. I think you're a good person to whom bad things have happened, but that doesn't mean you can't rise above it. You'll just need some help this time, and that's okay, you've been fighting on your own and winning for so long now."

"When Richard did that to me, I left that place with nothing but the _worst_ of me," Ryan said, the disgust creeping back into his voice. "Chloe hates me, my dad is God-knows-where, my mum died hating my guts, my colleagues hate me, my boss clearly doesn't think very much of me, and I hate myself more than all of them put together now. Literally no one wants me around, so why should I stay?"

Sylvester felt himself running out of options.

"When Chloe fell, everyone in the area heard her fall," Ryan stated. "She screamed all the way down. Everyone came running, tried to help her. No one noticed when my mum fell, she wasn't found until several hours later, apparently. Can't help but wonder, did she even make a sound when she fell?"

_Just like a fallen tree. _"Wonder if I'll make a sound when I fall," Ryan mused.

_Fall?!_ Was Ryan currently standing on a high surface near a road, like a motorway bridge? It would make sense, the hotline number was often seen engraved near high bridges for a reason, after all. Sylvester grabbed his pen and recorded more details, his heart pounding in his chest. "Ryan, why did you-"

A loud _BONG_ in the background cut him off, followed by another, then a third, and a fourth, and more until the count reached twelve. Both males were silent as the clock tower announced the arrival of midnight and the start of a new day.

"Hear that, Silver?" Ryan's voice said, causing Sylvester to release the breath he didn't realise had been bursting his lungs. During those long seconds, he'd been terrified his correspondent would hang up - or worse. "It's my birthday. I'm eighteen now."

Sylvester had to physically clamp down on the instinctual "Happy birthday," that almost tumbled from his lips.

"There's a reason I'm doing this now and not earlier," Ryan continued. "Everything started on my birthday, it's only fitting that my birthday be the end of it all as well."

The chime of the clock tower gave Sylvester another clue as to where Ryan currently was. He added it to his notes.

"Eighteen is big, Ryan," Sylvester said. "You're an adult now, you can do so many things you couldn't do before. So many doors open for you. Do you really want to close them all for good?"

Ryan let out a mirthless laugh. "Don't be silly, Silver," he replied. "You do realise that you need _money_ to do most of those things, right? To get money, you need a _job._ Even if I still had my job, with the pay I was getting, I could barely afford a can of beans."

"What about a can of beer?" Sylvester asked. "Have a taste of adult life, at the very least."

"No, no way," Ryan said hurriedly. "I'm not touching alcohol, not after ..."

Sylvester mentally kicked himself. Of course.

"I've been waiting for things to get better for over a decade now," Ryan went on. "I've tried to change myself for the better, move on, and for what? I've lost my entire family, I can't go back to work, I'm at a dead end with no way out. That's just my life and it'll never change. I'll never be any more than I've always been. Just save your time and breath on someone who can be saved."

Sylvester swallowed. "If you're so sure about that, why did you call this number?" he replied. "Think about it, why did you tell me all of this if you thought that nothing would come from it, that I wouldn't care? I think that you-"

"Stop telling me what I'm thinking!" Ryan interrupted harshly. "I've had enough of people gaslighting me, fucking around with my head! Don't pretend I'm something other than this mess that I am!"

The realisation sliced through Sylvester like a sudden icicle falling from the ceiling of an icy cave. Ryan's whole life had gone downhill because of acts of manipulation, gaslighting, believing that he'd done things he'd never dream of doing. Why would a young man scarcely older than Ryan himself imploring him not to take his own life be any different?

The harsh realisation morphed into sickening dread. "Where are you?!" Sylvester finally demanded to know, his free hand shaking on the desk, itching to call 999. No, to get up from this desk and physically stop Ryan himself.

"I'm sorry, I shouldn't have burdened you with this," Ryan let out, his voice cracking on the lump in his throat. "You'll probably have me on your conscience now ... or not, I don't know how many people you talk to, you probably can't remember them all. I don't blame you if you forget me, I never thought that I would get this far. I guess I just ... wanted someone to know I was here, even for a brief moment."

A faint revving could be heard on the other end, as tiny and significant as a butterfly's wing.

"A-ha, right on schedule," Ryan announced, his voice dripping heavily with forced lightness, before falling again as the revving grew louder. "I have to go now, my ride is almost here."

"Ryan, please, just tell me where you are," Sylvester pleaded. "It sounds like a road, are you at-"

"It's been nice knowing you, Sylvester."

The phone hung up before the young man could get another word out.

Sylvester refused to listen to the radio the next day. He already knew what he would hear if he did.

This wasn't the first time this had happened, not with him nor anyone else working at the hotline. But each and every time it did, it felt like a breach had been torn deep into his soul, like he was paying for their lost souls with pieces of his own.

There was no way of knowing whether the proportion of people who didn't take their own lives after calling outweighed that of those who did. Even if they had seemingly come around after calling, it was far too easy for them to fall down that brutal pitfall trap again.

Even so, he felt like a failure. Ryan had been broken so many times, mentally, and had been forced to try and heal on his own. The kid was incredibly strong to have found a way out of it at all, but it wasn't until both his body and brain were torn apart for the final time that he felt he couldn't fight anymore.

"Sylvester?"

The young man looked up in surprise at one of his colleagues holding a handset towards him. "There's a boy on the other end. He's asking for you," she explained.

Sylvester's eyebrows raised slightly, but he took his colleague's place with the handset. "Thank you for finding the courage to reach out to us today. With whom do I have the pleasure?"

Over his time working at the hotline, Sylvester had heard all manner of horrors and tragedies that spurred the deepest darkest corners of the mind to overtake the rest of it. Hearing them now still hurt, but they didn't really surprise him anymore, which only made it hurt more.

At that moment, hearing the voice on the other end felt like enough to undo all of it.

"Hi, Sylvester, it's Ryan again."

***This is working off of the assumption that Ryan was 16 when he left in Series 7, meaning he would've been 13 in Series 4 when he saw Chloe again.**

***As far as I know, most phones don't tell you outright if you've been blocked by a number you're trying to contact, but there are ways you can tell if you've been blocked.**

**To each and every person reading this, I need you to know that if you are struggling right now, whether your struggles are big or small, you are not alone, you never are. There are people out there that understand and that can help you and support you through it and out of it. If you or anyone you know is contemplating suicide, please look into suicide prevention services in your area/country. No one should have to feel like dying is the only way to stop suffering.**

**Love you all,**

**Justice xxx**


	2. I Am Damaged

**I didn't plan on doing this, I planned to leave the original on an open vagueness. But then I listened to the rest of the Dear Evan Hansen soundtrack, as well as a couple of others, and got more ideas. Also, it seems like a couple of people expected more even though I marked the original as "completed", but in any case, here we are.**

**This was taking way too long to come out, so instead of this being the second part of two, it'll be the second part of three. Hopefully, that won't take as long to come out, what with me having written part of it already - and also, lockdown thanks to the coronavirus.**

**Yet again, we can play the same game we played the last chapter if you so choose - Hunt the Musical Easter Eggs, now with extra musicals and even more obscure references!**

Ryan made his exit.

He would've been seen more easily if he hadn't chosen to wear all black that night, as if he was attending his own funeral already. It gave him the sense of blending into the background, melting into the shadows, just on the fringes of reality and the aether. The liminal space between "what was" and "next". Lost in the "in-between". He'd been slowly slipping away for the past several months, like a candle burning out before being forcibly snuffed out altogether.

Better to burn out than to fade away, right? Kurt Cobain said that in his letter. Sadly, it seemed Ryan didn't have that luxury, that choice. He'd tried for so long to keep burning. Even when he'd been a whole fire, out of control, a blaze that couldn't be tamed, at least he'd been burning. At least he'd been alive. Now, with his flame contained to a simple candle, he had been running low on wax for what felt like forever, only able to stay for brief flickers. What was the point of trying to keep himself going? There was simply no means to. The wax would run out completely, and then he'd disappear forever.

Then again, if he succeeded, then _burning_ would be one way to describe his eventual fate.

Ryan turned his gaze towards the sky, at the stars. Through the thick, impenetrable isolation that cloaked him, they filled the darkness with order and light. Silent and sure, keeping watch on the whole world through the night. Burning so brightly that they could be seen from billions of miles away.

But what about all the stars that couldn't be seen? Those that burned just as brightly, maybe more so, and yet were never seen? They just flickered out, coming and going without anyone seeing that they were ever even here, simply because they happened to be too far away, or positioned in some spatiotemporal blind spot. That was their fate, through no fault of their own.

No one could see him now, just like those faraway stars. He could barely hear his own footsteps anymore. Even the normally obnoxious timbre of vehicles speeding down nearby seemingly bypassed him. It was quiet in his head. Like silence, but not really silent. Just a still sort of quiet, like the sound of your heart in your head.

His heart had been through a lot. After all that had happened, he could feel it was charred black, clogged with soot and grime, yet still beating, still soldiering on. Working too hard for him.

Ryan arrived at the bridge earlier than expected. He'd meant to leave later, but he'd felt so claustrophobic in that grim flat that he'd had to leave. He hadn't bothered to leave a note, not even for Chloe. She didn't get to know what he said. She had forfeited all rights to his heart.

He'd saved every letter she'd written him, over the years, until she'd finally torn their relationship apart. The night before, he had taken a lighter to the box and burned every single one to ashes. If she had erased him, he could erase her just as easily.

The fire had been the warmest thing he'd felt in weeks.

It was then that he caught sight of a plaque attached to the railings:

**SAMARITANS CARE**

**TALK TO US ANYTIME**

**NIGHT OR DAY ON**

**0845 790 9090**

Oh yeah, he should've figured that something like that would be there. If he had been less cynical, he would've taken it as the universe giving him a sign not to go through with it. Too bad it didn't cancel out the overwhelming reasons to the contrary. No amount of talking about the steaming pile of utter shit that was his life could convince him it was somehow worth living.

Yet at the same time, he'd be waiting for a while before the clock struck midnight. If nothing else, it would pass the time. Maybe they could both pretend they had friends.

Barely knowing what he was doing, he pulled out his phone, dialled and called.

"Hello, thank you for finding the courage to reach out to us today," came the voice on the other end, a gentle lilt belonging to a young man, scarcely older than Ryan himself. "With whom do I have the pleasure?"

"... I can't go on."

A tiny crack in the dam, allowing a steady stream to persist through, splattering on the ground with the weight of all that had preceded its leakage. The cracks grew, more fluid spilt out, until the dam caved in on itself, letting the water burst free.

The flood swept the whole world, toppling mountains, shattering structures, drowning valleys and fjords and cities, swallowing whole continents. The Earth was trembling with its magnitude, scarcely able to bear its own weight.

Then a hurricane came, covering every square mile as far as the eye could see, sucking up the debris of the ruined Earth and spitting them out again haphazardly. It was coming right for him. He saw it coming but didn't move. It got closer, closer ...

In the eye of the hurricane, there was quiet, for just a moment.

He was back in that flat. It had been severely neglected, left in shambles. His mother was staring right at him and he was teetering on the knife-edge of uncertainty.

All he saw was the yellow sky.

"For the first time in my life, I had a reason to believe I'd be okay."

The sun was streaming in, shining on his face.

Maybe, if everything could've stayed that way for forever, he could've been alright.

But this was only the eye of the hurricane. A moment was never as long as you wanted it to be.

He'd lost Chloe. It was as if their mother had taken her with her after she died. Away from him for good. It was the lack of Chloe's light that had made his world go dark, not his mother's.

Maybe in hindsight, it should've been a sign. Much like the scorpion destined to sting, no matter how much he wanted to believe, however much he tried not to see what was really there, there was no hiding who he was.

And then

the sky

collapsed

without

a

sound.

The attack had stripped away everything that wasn't the absolute _worst_ of him. There was no more pretending he was something better than these broken parts, this mess that he was.

The broken pieces of sky plummeted around him, hitting the ground with the force of flaming asteroids. All the stars soon followed, noiseless as falling tears, leaving behind only empty blackness.

The rest of the world fell away. Now there was only him and Sylvester, connected only by a silvery thin thread.

And yet, Ryan couldn't seem to die.

_Wait for it._

_"I can help,"_ Sylvester was saying._ "I can direct you to people that can help you, they'll come running right to you."_

A tiny, lone hand reaching out from the darkness.

_"I'll even report Richard for you."_

A little bit of light, the tiniest chink. "Will they believe you?"

_"I'll make them believe me."_

Prospects of support, company, a way out - _"You will be found."_ Everything he wanted, everything he wished he had, dangling right there, right there in front of him.

He wanted to believe it was true. So badly.

But it wasn't. It was just a mirage. A sad invention. Ryan wouldn't let himself be deluded again.

_Wait for it._

The only way out was the fifty-foot plunge onto the cold, hard concrete below him.

_Wait for it._

If a person fell from a bridge and no one was around to see them do it, did they really let go of the railing?

_Wait for it wait for it wait for it wait ..._

_**BONG**_

The clock finally chimed midnight. He was now an adult. No one could tell him what to do anymore.

_"Why did you call this number? I think that-"_

"Shut up!" Ryan interrupted. Truth be told, he himself wasn't sure of the underlying reason he had called the number. He just knew it wasn't the one Sylvester was insinuating.

If a tree fell in the forest and no one was around to hear it, did it make a sound?

In any case, the tree would definitely crash if someone _was_ there.

"I guess I just ..." _needed to say goodbye, one last time,_ "... wanted someone to know I was here, even for a brief moment."

There was a large bus speeding down the motorway below. If he timed the jump right, the impact from that would be sure to finish him.

"I have to go now, my ride is almost here."

_"It sounds like a road, are you at-"_

"It's been nice knowing you, Sylvester."

Ryan hung up the phone. He debated holding onto it, but in the end, decided to leave it near the edge of the bridge. The closest thing to leaving a note he had. Besides, he knew that phones could be tracked. It was more akin to a headstone than anything else.

He climbed over the railing, leaning forward, staring hard at the city skyline. His line of sight went higher, aiming for the sky. The stars burned themselves into his eyes.

His eyes fell closed.

Serenity took over.

He let go.

* * *

Ryan expected the feeling of falling to be a rush. Unburdened, wind in his ears, almost like flying. One final moment of euphoria before it all ended.

Instead, it was more like when you're walking downstairs and you miss a step.

His stomach dropped out from under him before he realised abruptly that he wasn't falling. His eyes opened and, sure enough, the motorway was still far below him, the large bus speeding by under the bridge.

"Oh, thank God," breathed a female voice from behind him.

His brief surprise consumed by frustration, Ryan tried forcing himself over, only for his left arm to be tethered to the bridge. "Let me go!"

"Absolutely not!" cried a female voice from just behind him, tugging on his arm. "Just, please, come back over, we can talk about this."

Ryan groaned audibly. "I've just gotten off the phone with doing just that. Didn't help a buggering thing."

Another voice came from behind him. "I'm calling 911."

Ryan hadn't missed the American accents on both voices. He could've let her call 911 without telling them that the emergency number in Britain was 999, then attempted again while they were distracted. But at the moment, he'd been too shaken to think like he normally would've. "No way," he'd said, climbing back over the railing. "Don't get them involved, please."

The grip on his arm wasn't letting up. Its tightness felt sure enough to leave a bruise - and familiar enough to make his skin crawl with too-fresh memories. "Please, just let me go."

"I'm not going to do that," the first voice spoke again, spurring Ryan to finally turn around and look at them.

His detainers turned out to be two women, both appearing in their late forties. One had slightly curly blonde hair that hung just below her shoulders and delicate features that had probably been strikingly beautiful in her youth. She wore a long khaki trench coat and - strangely enough for a woman of her age - yellow high-top Converse. Her phone was clenched in her hand, still poised to call emergency services.

Her companion, the one that held his arm, wore a coat in an almost identical style, except hers was dark blue. She had sleek dark hair and her features were lined with a certain world-weariness like she had been through and learned to live with things that were unimaginable to most people.

Something in her face compelled Ryan to trust her. She looked like she would understand horrors like what he had been through.

"Why are you here?" he asked them, finally.

"We saw you," Yellow said, shortly. "We just driving through and we saw you and we knew what you were about to do and ... I just had to pull over."

"And you're not gonna leave me alone, are you?" Ryan realised.

"Hit the nail on the head there," Blue said, adopting a small smirk that still carried a hint of juvenile triumph. "We'll drag you right over to our car and lock you in. Cuff you to the door if we have to."

"You don't look like a copper."

"Would you rather we get the real ones to do it for you?" she replied.

"Didn't know that trying to kill yourself was a crime," Ryan muttered, realising that there was little point in fighting anymore. He was so tired of fighting.

The two women, who Ryan later learned were named Dr Barrett Watts (Blue) and Sophia Lance (Yellow), stayed true to their word and dragged him over to their car. They didn't cuff him inside, but Sophia opted to stay in the back with him rather than riding shotgun with Barrett. Presumably, so he didn't try to scramble out of the moving car.

When they set off, they almost immediately started interrogating him on his life and experiences that had led him to attempt to take his own life. He relayed the same story he had told to Sylvester just prior, similarly but differently. There were no tears or anger or even cynicism to be found in his account, just the matter-of-fact, impersonal delivery of a newscaster reporting on a terrorist attack. It was as if his spirit had already died when he'd tried to.

"Lost my job, slowly running out of food, haven't eaten for a couple of days now. Can't see a way out that won't end in me dying horribly. Might as well die on my terms," Ryan finished blandly, closing his eyes and slumping in his seat. He'd imagined death so much it felt more like a memory, yet it seemed like sleeping would be the closest thing to death he would get for the foreseeable future. Not to mention, sleeping would save him having to answer to anyone for a while.

Sophia shook him rather sharply, her manicure digging into his worn shirt. "You don't get to avoid things that easily. We're talking about this, now."

"Fine," Ryan retorted, anger and frustration suddenly re-igniting his numbed mind. "You wanna talk about it? You want me to say everything on my mind? Fine, I'll say it - I don't want to live any longer. Even if I somehow did, do you really think I deserve to? With all the shit I've done in life, and with the pile of shit that is my life? I don't deserve to live!"

"I. Respectfully. Disagree."

The three authoritative words from Barrett were spoken so firmly that they coursed through the framework of the whole car. Her face was fixed firmly on the road ahead, but they saw she was gripping the steering wheel in a white-knuckled grip.

Ryan was momentarily stunned by her declaration. Much like when he'd first laid eyes on her less than an hour prior, something in him felt compelled to trust her words. Unlike most people, she wasn't just saying them because she felt she had to - she meant them.

"How old are you?" Barrett queried.

"Eighteen." The answer felt strange in Ryan's mouth. Admitting to his own adulthood felt like spitting out a piece of chewing gum that had been there long enough for you to have to re-learn how to not be constantly chewing.

"How long have you been eighteen?" she continued.

Ryan checked his watch. "Thirty-seven minutes."

Sophia blinked. "Today's your birthday?"

"Yep," Ryan said. "As I've just said, it all started on my birthday, might as well end it all on the same day."

Barrett huffed. "Well, no matter. Point is, not a single person I know has stayed in the same place they were when they were eighteen, or seventeen, or nineteen, or whatever age. Things may have changed back then, but they could change again."

"Yeah, they could get worse." Ryan cringed internally at how childish he sounded, especially considering he was an adult now. "Get real, Barrett, how could they get better? I can't get a job, I'll probably be evicted before I can, and I barely have any qualifications to my name. That's not even taking into account the mess up here." He indicated towards his head, before realising that Barrett couldn't see him. "I'd still be a freak, damaged beyond repair."

Barrett sighed. "We're all damaged, Ryan, and we're all freaks."

"But that's alright," Sophia said, squeezing his hand. "Believe me, we know."

"Care to spill?"

Sophia swallowed, before taking a deep breath. "When ... Barrett and I were teenagers, our senior year of high school, we were at the top of the food chain. We just floated above it all."

"You did," Barrett snorted. "I actually had to work to get there." She was still staring forward, meaning she couldn't have noticed the deeply uncomfortable expression Sophia had adopted.

"That's not important," the other woman dismissed, turning back to Ryan. "But, even though we looked so sure in ourselves, our positions were so volatile." She looked even more melancholy in the dark car. "Trying to stay at the top in our school was like floating in the tiniest lifeboat in a huge, raging black ocean, crowded full of people you know. You'll sink any minute unless someone goes, and the whole time you're hoping and praying and doing everything you can to ensure that it won't be you that gets thrown over the side ... and when it's finally your turn to go, you end up sinking so deep that it feels easier to just ... swim down."

Ryan sat, unblinking, in the car seat, his hand still held by Sophia's. Her words had sent shivers through every fibre of his being - after all, what she had said about constantly being on edge, too frightened to budge an inch out of place lest you lose what is familiar and comfortable to you ... was that not what he'd been doing for much of his life?

He didn't know whether to find her understanding comforting or disconcerting.

"Barrett stopped me though," Sophia continued, snapping out of her reverie. "I'll never forget what she said. 'If you were happy every day of your life, you wouldn't be human..."

"...You'd be a game show host," Barrett finished.

A small bubble of laughter floated its way to Ryan's throat before bursting again. "Okay, maybe you don't need to be happy every day but you do need to be happy some days and I just... can't. I don't have a reason to. Not anymore. I've already told you why."

The two women were silent for a contemplative moment. During the long seconds, he thought that he had finally bested them, showing them once and for all that there was no reason for him to stay much longer, just like he had with Sylvester earlier. They would just let him go, let him make his way to another high surface, accepting him as one of those that couldn't be saved.

Then Barrett spoke again. "Do you really think that killing yourself would be the right thing to do?"

Ryan rolled his eyes. "_Yes_. Why the hell do you think I was trying to do it before you stopped me?!" he snapped.

"Alright," Barrett replied, remaining calm. "We're going to arrive at our hotel soon. We're going to check into our room and you're going to stay with us for the night. When the morning comes, I want you to think again about what would be the right thing to do."

Ryan sighed again, his eyelids and shoulders heavy with the weight of what her words implied.

He must've slipped off to sleep a little for the rest of their journey, as the next thing he knew, Sophia was gently shaking him awake and they were shuffling inside the polished lobby. Normally, Ryan would've been more self-conscious about his scruffy form alongside two sleek, well-dressed, middle-aged women, but he was too numb and too burned out to register the looks the receptionist sent his way, or Sophia's words regarding him.

Stepping inside their roomy suite, Ryan could definitely say that it wasn't to be sniffed at. It was even bigger than his little flat, with a large bedroom with twin beds and a sitting room with a few armchairs and two soft sofas sitting around a glass coffee table and a 36-inch TV. The rooms smelled of lavender detergent.

"Eat up," Sophia said, thrusting something in front of his tired eyes. The sweet smell roused him slightly and his eyes focused on a soft cookie in a small paper bag, chocolate with hazelnuts. Sophia held two more in her other hand.

Being the first sign of food in a good couple of days for Ryan, it bypassed the voice of common sense in his mind that said that the middle of the night was not the optimal time to be consuming sugar. He didn't even think to question where it had come from. Sophia could've brought them with her, though when he took it from her hand, he felt its warmth as an indicator that it had been freshly baked not long prior.

It hardly mattered - the first bite of that damn cookie was like a drug to him. Its soft insides crumbled away in his mouth in a way that rendered it almost molten. The cookie was gone before Sophia had gotten halfway through hers.

Just behind them, Barrett had commandeered the electric kettle and was sifting through the selection of hot drinks the room provided. "Coffee?" she offered, to neither of them in particular.

"It's the middle of the night," Ryan frowned.

"Jet lag," Sophia explained. "It's 6 p.m in Seattle right now. We're not gonna be able to sleep for a while."

"I actually meant decaf," Barrett clarified, giving her companion a look. "I have to meet with the Chief Inspector tomorrow, Soph. I can't be falling asleep in front of him."

"Chief Inspector?" Ryan echoed. "Is that why you're here?"

Barrett nodded. "Come sit down, we can explain."

They took their seats on the sofas around the coffee table, sipping their hot drinks. Despite their lack of caffeine, the heat and comfort were enough to keep them awake for the time being. Once her thirst was sated, Barrett told her story.

**Yeah, I chose to include the actual Samaritans phone number in the UK in here, not only for authenticity but also for anyone reading this who may need it.**

**The part with the cookies was inspired by the times my family have stayed in hotels that are part of a chain called Hilton, specifically their DoubleTree line. They give fresh chocolate cookies to you when you checking in and my God, they taste the best when you're relaxing in your room, exhausted after a long journey. There's a DoubleTree hotel in Newcastle so Barrett and Sophia can stay there.**

**God, I miss Newcastle, I had to leave after uni was closed thanks to the coronavirus.**

**Stay safe and healthy, folks.**


	3. The World Seemed To Burn (Draft)

**So, if you've seen my last update on A Spine-Tingling Tale, you'll know that I'm discontinuing my fics and leaving this fandom. However, this was partially written already, so I've decided to post this draft and summarise the blank spaces. My full words are in my ASTT chapter if you haven't read them already. It's a shame because I was proud of this fic, but such is life. The stuff I didn't write, I'll summarise in square brackets and italics.**

"I don't want to scare you, Ryan," Barrett began, "but I feel you deserve to know the details for your own safety. You see, there's been a serial killer on the loose in Newcastle over the last month. We came here because I am a criminal psychologist with expertise in this killer's _modus operandi_ \- his pattern of killing."

"And what would that be?" Ryan queried, his interest piqued.

Barrett turned a very grave expression towards him. "He targets ... young men. Very young men. Mostly between the ages of 18 and 21. The way he does it is, well, he makes their deaths look like suicides. That, or he somehow _makes_ them do it to themselves."

Ryan froze as he processed her implications. "So, when you saw me on the bridge ..."

She nodded soberly. "He's even left false notes, I've seen them. He's got their handwriting down cold, apparently, but he can't quite match their style, their personalities. That's how they eventually deduced it was a serial offender, and they contacted me since I'm seemingly the closest person with expertise in crimes like this." For a few seconds, she stiffened up too, staring down into her coffee cup as memories floated to the surface and bubbled over in her eyes before she snapped out of it. "That's what my meeting with the chief inspector in charge of the case is about. We need to know exactly what kind of person we're dealing with that would do something like this."

"... Why do I not know about this?" Ryan asked though he guessed that part of the reason was due to him having so little contact with the outside world over the recent weeks. The assault had induced overwhelming disgust and self-loathing in him to the point where he'd been scarcely able to leave his home, let alone keep up with current events.

"A few reasons," Sophia piped up. "For one, suicides of young men just don't end up in the news like they would if they were murdered. If there were a series of connected suicides - or murders made to look like suicides - that would certainly sell a few, but the police haven't given the press any evidence that there is such a pattern."

"If they did, then nearly every suspected suicide by a young man would immediately be suspected to be connected to this case," Barrett explained. "The reports would be too many and too much all at once. It's easier to filter them through the usual channels and then decide which ones are connected."

She gave Ryan a hard look, and Ryan realised what she meant. "I'm sorry, I'm not one of them," he said. "No one made me do this - at least, not like that. I can't help you."

"That's okay," Barrett sighed. "Like we just said, it's worth verifying which ones are connected to the case and which not. Besides, whether your case was connected to the investigation or not, I'm still glad we found you on the bridge just then."

Ryan swallowed down the last gulp of hot chocolate, almost choking on the cocoa and sugar that had settled on the bottom. "I'm not sure I am," he admitted.

"As I said, you can think about the right thing in the morning," Barrett said. "You've been up late enough; we need to try to sleep." She set her now-empty mug down and exchanged a look with Sophia. The blonde woman nodded before Barrett got up and made for the bathroom.

As soon as her companion was out of sight, Sophia got up and started searching through the drink selection again. "Time for some real coffee."

"Don't you need to sleep too?" Ryan asked.

"Nope," she replied, re-boiling the kettle. "I'm not sleeping tonight, not with you here."

Ryan immediately understood what she meant. "Might get a bit boring just watching me sleep all night."

"Then I hope I stay bored all night," Sophia said firmly, reaching for the real coffee. Ryan didn't have it in him to argue.

Barrett returned minutes later, taking over Sophia's role as watcher while the other woman used the bathroom. She whispered her explanations to Barrett on her way out, and she nodded in agreement.

Soon after, Barrett was settling into one of the twin beds. She offered Ryan the other bed, but he declined, feeling too awkward about sleeping in the same room as an older woman he'd just met. Instead, he and Sophia stayed on the sofas as she prepared for a long night on suicide watch.

"You really should try and sleep," Sophia said, in a bare whisper so as not to disturb Barrett.

"Bit hard to sleep with an audience," Ryan muttered back.

Sophia brought out her phone and fixed her gaze on it. "I'm not staring at you now. Don't get any ideas; I can still hear you."

She needn't have worried - Ryan was out like a light within the next ten minutes.

* * *

_I should be dead. I should be dead. I should be dead._

The mantra hadn't stopped playing in Ryan's head since he'd woken up, his stiff and sore joints reminding him that his body was very much alive - even more so after the first food in days.

_I should be dead. _

They'd left the hotel in a daze. Barrett had left them at some point, presumably to meet with the chief inspector of the case of the linked young male suicides. Ryan had been left with Sophia, following her around the streets of Newcastle like a lost puppy. Even in his idle communications with her, any semblance of connection he'd felt with her the night before had slipped away.

_[Eventually, he opens up to her, and they have a good, therapeutic talk. Sophia talks about her relationship with Barrett and a little about her life when she was in high school - she was part of the most popular clique in school but fell dramatically from grace after Heather, the most popular girl in school, killed herself as well as the two best players on the football team. When Sophia opened up about how she'd felt suicidal too due to the immense peer pressure, she'd been kicked off the team and bullied until she tried to overdose. Barrett, however, stopped her before she could and they became good friends._

_Eventually, Barrett rejoins them, and they eat lunch in a cafe. Barrett talks about her side of the high school story, how she'd also been part of the popular clique but had been kicked off for standing up to Heather. It's even hinted at that she knows more about the suicides of Heather and the football players than she's letting on. She describes how their small town of Sherwood, Ohio, and especially their high school, had been an oppressive Thunder Dome that she and everyone else had to fight their way through to survive. In a way, it was hard to blame the popular clique for trying their hardest to stay at the top.] _

"What did you do when you got out of there?" Ryan asked.

"Bought a motorbike, changed my name and moved up to Seattle," Barrett said casually. "Went to college, majored in criminal psychology, published a few papers drawing on my own experiences and, well, the rest is history. I ended up marrying a lawyer."

Ryan nodded slowly before turning to Sophia. "What about you, then? What do you do?"

"I'm a lawyer," she said simply.

Ryan found himself perplexed at the knowing smirk on her face before he pieced together Barrett's words from just prior.

Sophia smiled at the realisation on his face. "Yep. We moved out of town together after graduating high school. Stayed together all through college until it was legal to marry in our state. We were lucky - Washington was legalised a few years before most of the rest of the US, including our home state of Ohio." She looked pensive again. "I changed my name too. It was tough cutting off our old life, but what happened there was ... we just had to erase ourselves from the narrative."

"And yet it's unacceptable for me to erase myself from the narrative?" Ryan parroted, raising an eyebrow.

"That's not the same thing, and you know it," Barrett retorted firmly, before softening. "Ryan ... I'm sorry you've had it rough. You're young; you're damaged, you're frightened. To be completely candid, I wish I could wave a magic wand and make it all better for you, but I don't own a magic wand and I'm pretty sure none of us here do. Just answer me this - what kind of life do you want? What kind of life would you want to have and not want it to end?"

Ryan winced. The question of what-might-have-been was one that he'd been toying with for far too long. It was an exhaustingly painful game to play, one that left him curled up and shedding silent tears into his knees every time he did, trying to ride out the stinging wave of unforgiving loneliness and futility. But it was too much effort to stay away from, like an insect bite you couldn't stop scratching.

He sniffed. "I want... I wish everything were different," he admitted. "I wish my mum were good; I wish my dad had stayed around a little longer. I wish my sister didn't fall out of a window and be paraplegic for the rest of her life. I wish she, at least, understood why I couldn't mourn our mum dying. I wish I didn't have to go through life like I was fighting a war every step of the way."

He gripped the hot mug in his hands as a lump formed in his throat. "For so long, all my hope was pinned on Chloe who I didn't even know and who didn't know me but ... you know, maybe if I did, maybe if I could just talk to her then I could be okay but ... then I finally met her and ... nothing was different at all. I wish everything had changed back then; I wish _I_ had changed back then. I wish I was part of ... something. I wish anything I said, or did, mattered to anyone. I mean, let's face it - would anyone even notice if I just disappeared tomorrow?!"

Sophia quickly removed the mug from his shaking hands, placed it on the table and grasped his hand in both of hers. He clutched hers back for dear life as he tried not to break down all over again in the middle of the cafe. "I can't live like this. Not now and not for the rest of my life. I just can't."

_[Barrett and Sophia comfort him and conspire quietly among themselves until Barrett proposes ...]_

"Sometimes, instead of erasing yourself from the narrative, maybe try ... writing your way out of it."

Ryan frowned. "I'm not sure I follow."

"Think of it this way," Barrett said. "If you had died last night, the story would've ended completely. It's not a good story, I'll give you that, and it would've had an even worse ending. But if you write your way out, the narrative doesn't have to end - it just changes."

"And how do you suggest I do that?" Ryan asked pointedly, raising an eyebrow.

"What did we just say about what we did when things got too bad?" Sophia pointed out.

"I don't own a motorbike," Ryan stated.

"No, but I do," Barrett said, her juvenile smirk playing on her features once again.

_[Barrett suggests that Ryan change his name, leave his old life behind - what little of it there was - and come back with them to America. Insert lyrics/references to Sincerely Me from Dear Evan Hansen here (yes, this is still a fic mostly written for the purpose of having the excuse to cram in a lot of musical references), which are about reinvention and changing who you are. Ryan, understandably, isn't 100% on board with it at first]_

Sophia paused. "Have you ever actually grieved, Ryan?"

"I've already told you why I won't grieve for my mum," Ryan replied through gritted teeth.

"That's not what I meant," Sophia said. "I mean, have you ever grieved for your sister?"

The question took Ryan off guard. "W-what?"

_[Sophia tells him that, judging from what he's told them, he never properly let himself feel the loss of Chloe cutting him off after their mother died, he just tried to ignore it before attempting to erase her by burning her letters. Ryan gets pretty emotional at this revelation, and they quickly have to leave the cafe so he can break down in their car, feeling the loss of his sister freshly.] _

"It's okay," Sophia whispered. "I know that this is moving really fast for you. It feels like your world has turned upside down. I know there's no replacing what you've lost and you need time to grieve. But we won't abandon you. We'll be right here by your side. Everything's going to be okay."

_[Ryan contemplates his options, decides he really has nothing left to lose and agrees to leave everything behind. Just before he does, however, he's left with just one thing to do. He calls the suicide hotline again and asks for Sylvester Cole. _

_If there's one thing I regret, it's not getting to writing the second and final conversation with Sylvester - where Ryan tells him that he has been found and that if Sylvester hadn't kept him around for long enough for Barrett and Sophia to see him, he would've been dead. Sylvester is over the moon, but still nervous, and makes Ryan promise that he will live. Thankfully, Ryan promises he will, and lets him know that this is the last conversation he will have as Ryan Reeves - he's changing his name and writing his way out, starting again somewhere new. Sylvester is worried and asks to talk to Barrett and Sophia. They assure him that they're legit. They say their goodbyes, Ryan changes his name to Aaron Flint because I say so. References to Hamilton and Heathers are sprinkled liberally throughout as well as any others that I would've felt appropriate. Wish I still had the fuel to write it properly. The fic ends with this line]_

With that, Dr Barrett Watts, Sophia Lance and Aaron Flint boarded their plane and flew away back to Seattle, together. Just behind them, the world seemed to burn.

**Good Lord, the parts written in italics and square brackets were cringey. I know there are a few too many loose ends still untied by the way I laid things out, like the fact that there's apparently a serial killer in Newcastle that's just ... left there. A more diligent writer than I would've planned things out a lot better - if I had the motivation, I probably would've too - but as is, I am a simple person who now has a special interest in musicals so rampant that I literally inserted two characters from one right under your noses. Okay, I'll clarify - Barrett and Sophia are literally meant to be Veronica Sawyer and Heather McNamara from the musical Heathers. The part about them changing their names isn't actually out of character for them, trust me. I would explain further but honestly, go listen to the Heathers musical yourself. And then watch Hamilton on Disney+ if you can. Then go listen to Dear Evan Hansen, the initial inspiration for this fic, and Be More Chill, which is basically Dear Evan Hansen's awkward, geeky younger sibling who people often meet through their popular older sibling, but still has a charm of their own. Sorry, I'm rambling right now.**

**Honestly, it's actually kind of fitting that this fic ends, in its own shoddy way, with Ryan leaving his old life behind and starting over somewhere else as that kind of what I'm doing with this fandom. Unlike him, I'm not burning my bridges though. I love all of you guys and I won't ever forget any of you. Maybe I'll be back to join you further down the line, but for now I'll say ... farewell, Dumping Ground fandom. Thank you for being awesome.**

**Justice xxxxxx**


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